So I’m Running A Marathon…

It’s obviously been a while since I’ve written something that wasn’t a race report or recap. I don’t know about you, but race reports are always tricky. Either they’re exciting, or they’re incredibly boring. I write them for the sake of being able to look back and make notes on any specific happenings during a race/event because I have a relatively short-term memory and unless something about the race/event was super traumatizing, chances are that I’m not going to remember much. And there’s definitely other things to write about. And so, here we are.

I’m finally fulfilling one of the items on my bucket list. I will be running my very first marathon later this year.Am I terrified? Oh, you bet.

I remember when I thought five miles was a heck of a long distance. (It is a relatively long distance, but I’ve run five miles so many times on a weekly basis during my life as a pacer that it doesn’t faze me anymore.) I remember running my very first Spartan Race and laughing at the idea of doing a Beast. 12+ miles in the mountains? That sounded ridiculous. And now, about two years later, I’ve completed the Spartan Beast three times and I’ve run four half marathons.

Clearly, I love to prove myself wrong.

I flirted with the idea of running a marathon for a while. About a year, I believe. Though to be fairly honest, I didn’t have much inspiration or motivation to tackle that kind of distance. I’m not fast. And I’m fairly impatient. With that combination you can imagine that spending more than four straight hours running isn’t the most titillating of ideas.

So why am I going through with it? Funny you should ask.

I finally got inspired to put my name in for consideration for the New York City Marathon late last year after seeing some finisher photos of one of my friends from The Republic, a running group I run with in Los Angeles, at the Tokyo marathon. Just about every member of The Republic had completed a marathon or two — and in pretty blazing times too (we’re talking around the three-hour mark). Intimidating? Yup. But after finishing races more than 13 miles long, it was probably time for me to challenge the coveted 26.2. And I wanted to do it in a big city: New York or Chicago.

But as luck would have it, I did not get accepted into the New York City Marathon.

Slightly heartbroken, I decided to just keep my runs casual and focus more on weightlifting. Maybe I just wasn’t meant to run a marathon this year. But if I caught wind of another marathon in the area, perhaps I would wrangle someone to do it with me.

A few weeks later I woke up to an email notifying me that my application for the Chicago Marathon had been accepted. And since my registration had automatically processed upon acceptance, I had no choice but to commit.

I was excited when I saw the email, mostly because I had completely forgotten that I had even applied. Though after the three seconds of exhilaration came the looming sense of anxiety and dread. Like, holy Batman, this is going to happen. I’m actually going to run a marathon.

I’ve already started training. But I’ll start posting some updates and tidbits so you can follow along. Who knows? Maybe it’ll be useful funny to look back at later.